them in connection with solar—I may even say stellar—physics, for evidence is augmenting in favor of the view that interstellar space is not empty, but is filled with highly attenuated matter of a nature such as may be put into our vacuum-tubes. Nor can the matter occupying stellar space be said any longer to be beyond our reach for chemical and physical test. The spectroscope has already thrown a flood of light upon the chemical constitution and physical condition of the sun, the stars, the comets, and the far-distant nebula?, which have yielded spectroscopic photographs under the skillful management of Dr. Huggins, and Dr. Draper, of New York. Armed with greatly improved apparatus, the physical astronomer has been able to reap a rich harvest of scientific information during the short periods of the last two solar eclipses; that of 1879, visible in America, and that of May last, observed in Egypt by Lockyer, Schuster, and by Continental observers of high standing. The result of this last eclipse expedition has been summed up as follows: "Different temperature levels have been discovered in the solar atmosphere; the constitution of the corona has now the possibility of being determined, and it is proved to shine with its own light. A suspicion has been aroused once more as to the existence of a lunar atmosphere, and the position of an important line has been discovered. Hydrocarbons do not exist close to the sun, but may in space between us and it."
To me personally these reported results possess peculiar interest, for in March last I ventured to bring before the Royal Society a speculation regarding the conservation of solar energy, which was based upon the three following postulates, viz.:
1. That aqueous vapor and carbon compounds are present in stellar or interplanetary space.
2. That these gaseous compounds are capable of being dissociated by radiant solar energy while in a state of extreme attenuation.
3. That the effect of solar rotation is to draw in dissociated vapors upon the polar surfaces, and to eject them, after combustion has taken place, back into space equatorially.
It is therefore a matter of peculiar gratification to me that the results of observation here recorded give considerable support to that speculation. The luminous equatorial extensions of the sun which the American observations revealed in such a striking manner (with which I was not acquainted when writing my paper) were absent in Egypt; but the outflowing equatorial streams I suppose to exist could only be rendered visible by reflected sunlight, when mixed with dust produced by exceptional solar disturbances or by electric discharge; and the occasional appearance of such luminous extensions would serve only to disprove the hypothesis entertained by some, that they are divided planetary matter, in which case their appearance should be permanent. Professor Langley, of Pittsburg, has shown, by means of his bolometer, that the solar actinic rays are absorbed chiefly in the solar instead of
